I give a lot of presentations, and I thought it’d be fun to display my heart rate for the audience during the presentations.
I picked up one of the SparkFun Heart Rate Monitor Interface (HRMI) breakouts, which supports I2C (7-bit address). I connected it to the Imp, and after a little tinkering around, I was able to pull my heart rate from the breakout. I thought I’d post the code here for anybody else that might want to use the HRMI breakout. I used a Polar T31 transmitter. The breakout supports both coded and non-coded transmitters, but the non-coded is generally less expensive.
Sampling happens every five seconds. From here I have the Imp HTTP POST the data to a server (PHP on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk), where I store the heart rate data in a database (Parse.com), and then send it along to a Web Socket server (Pusher.com). At that point, anybody viewing a specific web page can watch my heart rate in near-real-time during the presentation. That code is not attached. If there is interest, I can make it available as well.
That’s a really cool and great idea - it would be cool to combine that with a Melon (or other similar device) to get even more biometrics during a presentation!
Sorry for the lag here - it seems I fried the Imp in trying to make some improvements to the project. I’ll post a link to the code when my replacement Imp arrives. I’d be happy to show the project on the Google Hangout at some point. I’m designing a heart-shaped enclosure for the project that I can clip to my belt during presentations. Might be more interesting to show then. It’s just wires and boards for now.
be careful with biometrics in front of an audience. What if someone accidentally or on purpose asks you an embarrassing question ? : ) might show up even more than a red face.